Mozilla Boot to Gecko B2G to develop Open Web Operating System

Mozilla launched new project called Boot to Gecko (B2G) to build operating system for mobile devices that will run applications primarily on open web. It is known that source code will be released to public in real-time, wrote Andreas Gal, a Mozilla researcher.

“We will do this work in the open, we will release the source in real-time, we will take all successful additions to an appropriate standards group, and we will track changes that come out of that process. We aren’t trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we’re trying to have them run on the web”

Foundational goal of B2G project is to explore and remedy areas where current Web standards are insufficient for building modern mobile applications. Besides that, B2G going to require work in a number of areas as below:

– New web APIs: build prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content (Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.) – Privilege model: making sure that these new capabilities are safely exposed to pages and applications – Booting: prototype a low-level substrate for an Android-compatible device – Applications: choose and port or build apps to prove out and prioritize the power of the system.

Mozilla will seek to propose new standards to address challenges that emerge during development. It wants the applications developed for B2G to eventually be able to run normally in any conventional standards-compliant Web browser.